I despair when I read accounts of misuse of air guns that results in injury, as in your article about a pellet embedded in a pet cat's jaw (The Argus, May 3).

There are numerous initiatives by local gun clubs, schools and national organisations to teach young people humane pest control and game shooting, only to hear some uneducated moron has used the wrong weapon against the wrong quarry.

A reader mentioned banning air weapons. If only it was that simple - banning never achieved anything.

Since Dunblane and the ban on hand guns in 1997, the use of these weapons has increased to epidemic proportions thanks to criminals.

It's not the weapon that's the problem. A gun is just a lump of inert metal until someone has the intent to use it.

It's the intent that has to be legislated against by stiffer penalties in the courts.

If the idiot who shot that cat knew he would be arrested and locked up for a couple of years, he would have thought twice about pulling of that shot.

The government has just made the same mistake by "banning" the sale of Brocock air pistols to the public as they can be easily converted into live weapons.

This means the underground suppliers will just supply them with the real thing, imported from abroad, and the ban will not reduce the level of gun crime in any way.

-John Atkins, secretary Artists Rifles Clubhouse, Woking